Welcome to another of CRN's periodic looks at M&A activity in the networking, infrastructure and data center spaces, where the buzz is frequent and the M&A intrigue is piled high.

With the end of the calendar year upon us, here are 12 recent acquisitions in these channel-crucial market segments that solution providers should definitely be following.

Money Involved: $1.2 billion

Why It Matters: Just when you think Cisco's lost its appetite for channel-disruptive blockbusters, along comes something like this: a $1.2 billion snap-up of a company that was on an IPO path. The acquisition brings Cisco a cloud management technology, and Meraki is now the networking titan's go-to for midmarket networking sales. In the wake of Cisco's Meraki buy last week came a galaxy of new questions, particularly for partners of both companies. But as statement M&A moves go, Cisco made a big one.

Money Involved: Undisclosed

Why It Matters: Brocade's been on the ropes in recent years, but its last few quarters' worth of earnings have shown signs of strength, and in Vyatta, it's made a key acquisition while in an upswing. Vyatta, a well-liked virtualized networking startup, has an operating system based on open-source software that's portable to standard x86 hardware as well as most virtualization and cloud platforms. It's expected to give Brocade's emerging software-defined networking (SDN) strategy a big boost.

Money Involved: $1 billion

Why It Matters: Riverbed Technology is the big iron in WAN optimization, but for a few years now, the company has sought to expand that purview and shift toward being more of a multifaceted "performance" specialist. It's bought several small companies that thrust it into the application delivery, Web content acceleration and other disciplines. Opnet, however, is Riverbed's biggest M&A move yet and broadens Riverbed's footprint in the converging application performance management and network performance management segments.

Money Involved: $125 million

Why It Matters: Given what Cisco stands to gain from infrastructure automation -- an add-on, services-centric capability to its compelling converged data center play -- this one seems like a no-brainer. Cisco says it plans to offer "single-pane-of-glass" management of networking, compute, storage, virtual machine and operating system resources, especially in deployments that include its Unified Computing System (UCS) and Nexus switching products. Team Cloupia knows the territory, too; CEO Raju Datla (pictured) ran a previous Cisco acquire, Jahi Networks.

Money Involved: $32 million

Why It Matters: Is it a new era in systems integrator and IT VAR mergers and acquisitions? If there are more like this one, then yes. India-based IT services giant Rolta, one of the top Oracle partners in the world, paid $32 million to acquire AT Solutions Group, the parent company of well-known infrastructure solution provider -- and SP500 regular -- AdvizeX Technologies LLC. The deal creates a $500 million international company with 4,000 employees and is, as AdvizeX President Fred Traversi told CRN, "a major effort behind combining a leading system integrator and VAR to attack this software-defined data center opportunity."

Money Involved: Undisclosed

Why It Matters: As video integration becomes part and parcel of the unified communications discussion, expect major UC solution providers to forgo building videoconferencing practices in favor of acquiring them. Strategic Products and Systems, a Parsippany, N.J.-based solution provider and one of the country's top Avaya and Microsoft partners, went that route with Providea Conferencing, a Camarillo, Calif.-based video and telepresence specialist with substantial Polycom, Cisco, LifeSize and Masergy practices. It was only the latest in a series of acquisitions for SPS, which was No. 104 on UBM Channel's 2012 Solution Provider 500 and has bought five other fellow VARs in the past three years.

Money Involved: Undisclosed

Why It Matters: Much like Cisco's pickup of Cloupia, Dell's buyout of Gale Technologies is a cloud management and infrastructure orchestration play. And seeing as there have been almost no tier-one IT vendors with Dell's appetite for acquisition lately, everything Round Rock does on the M&A front is a subject of interest. What Gale brings Dell -- which is triumphing in enterprise even as it tanks in consumer -- is technology that helps customers turn discrete server, storage and networking components into integrated solutions for high-end applications and virtualized, private cloud environments.

Money Involved: Undisclosed

Why It Matters: EMC is the industry's ranking storage behemoth, but since its 2006 acquisition of RSA, it's slowly but surely built a security stronghold through additional acquisitions such as Network Intelligence, Archer Technologies and NetWitness. Silver Tail Systems makes Web fraud detection software, and it's the latest in a string of intriguing EMC security moves that have included rumors of a security acquisition on a grander scale, as well as making investments in hotshot cloud security startups like Zscaler.

Money Involved: $30.6 million

Why It Matters: A less talked-about but still quite significant acquisition in the contact center space happened back in May: Enghouse Systems plunked down slightly north of Zeacom's 2012 revenues ($29 million) to absorb the company. Zeacom, based in New Zealand, was a frequent presence at industry conferences and known for its cloud, hosted and on-premise contact center platform for small businesses. Though still a relative newcomer in the hotly contested contact center segment, Canada-based Enghouse has plenty of good buzz and is getting noticed as the CC market itself is going through a significant refresh.

Money Involved: $146 million

Why It Matters: There was perhaps no other acquisition in the VoIP and UC space this year that has so much potential to reshape a company's identity. ShoreTel has begun the delicate process of integrating the former M5's hosted communications platform in as its Cloud Division and rebranding the M5 service as ShoreTel Sky. The channel strategy for Sky is a work in progress that partners are willing to see through, but ShoreTel is also grappling with a few PR black-eyes, such as the failure of some Sky services during Superstorm Sandy in October.

Money Involved: $230 million

Why It Matters: Whereas before this spring 2012 buy, Avaya partnered heavily for video as a UC add-on, now it has a top-rated videoconferencing solution of its own that it bought on the relative cheap. Avaya's go-it-alone strategy -- versus partner -- for areas such as video and data networking is yet unproven. But, what's clear is that Avaya partners are psyched for the Radvision Scopia products and that Avaya has begun to roll them out to its broader channel heading into the new year.

Money Involved: $1.2 billion

Why It Matters: Well, yes. Perhaps the most significant acquisition in the networking and data center space this year -- not only because Nicira was the best-marketed (and some would say, most interesting) of the emerging software-defined networking (SDN) startup but also because Nicira's technology thrusts VMware into networking in a way that will compete head-to-head with Cisco -- is also one of VMware's most important strategic partners. This should be a fun one to watch, especially as Cisco projects like its SDN spin-in Insiemi include features that threaten Cisco's already-strained relationship with VMware and its majority-owner EMC.